Oebisfelde – Salzwedel railway line

Oebisfelde – Salzwedel
Route number (DB) :	6900
Course book section (DB) :	301 (2002)
Route length:	59.2 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from Wolfsburg 0.0 Oebisfelde to Stendal and Magdeburg Buchhorst canal bridge Mittelland Canal 6.3 Buchhorst 15.3 Kunrau (Altm) formerly Cunrau 20.5 Kusey 27.5 Blocks to Wernstedt 32.5 Bandau from calf 36.7 Beetzendorf (Saxony-Anhalt) to Diesdorf 42.8 Siedenlangenbeck 46.9 Kuhfelde 50.7 Dambeck 54.4 from Badel Salzwedel – Diesdorf 56.0 Salzwedel old town from Uelzen 59.2 Salzwedel to Stendal and Geestgottberg

Train in Kunrau Station (1994)

The Oebisfelde – Salzwedel railway was a single-track, non-electrified railway line in the western Altmark and was used for passenger and freight traffic from 1889 to 2002.

Route description

The route led from the small town of Oebisfelde on the Berlin-Lehrter Railway north to the district town of Salzwedel on the Stendal – Uelzen railway line . It led through a varied landscape, such as the Drömling low moorland and the Klötzer mountains.

history

The Altmark, which belonged to the Prussian province of Saxony in the 19th century , is a heavily used agricultural area. So it made sense to connect the Oebisfelde railway junction on the Lehrter Bahn as a state railway line with the old Hanseatic city of Salzwedel and thus connect a larger area to the railway network. However, the places on the line always had small populations. The largest of these places are Klötze and Beetzendorf . The total length of the route was 59 kilometers. On November 1, 1889, operations began on the line.

In the following years the following branch lines were built:

• Klötze– Wernstedt - Kalbe (Milde) (spelling at that time: Calbe (Milde))
• Beetzendorf– Rohrberg - Diesdorf with the Rohrberg– Zasenbeck junction
• Beetzendorf – Kalbe (Milde)

These three routes were operated by Altmärkische Kleinbahn-AG , a provincial Saxon company, and their predecessor companies.

In 1929/30, according to the timetable at the time, five pairs of passenger trains ran the route on working days. The travel time was around 120 minutes. The route was administered by the Reichsbahndirektion Hannover.

Time under the Reichsbahn

In 1975 the line was listed as KBS 764 in the timetable of the Deutsche Reichsbahn , as part of the Haldensleben –Salzwedel line. Seven pairs of trains now traveled the route on weekdays, which now took them around 100 minutes. Most of the trains were hauled by locomotives, while some trains were already driven with rail buses of the VT 2.09 series . Freight traffic was brisk during the GDR era. All stations on the route had loading lanes. Crossroads were also available at every train station. From 1966, the passenger trains on the Salzwedel – Badel route also ran via Salzwedel-Altstadt, then at the Jeetze junction on an approximately one-kilometer stretch of new line towards Badel. In 1980 this connection was closed.

Most of the branch lines on the Oebisfelde – Salzwedel line were shut down during the GDR era. Operations on the junction from Beetzendorf to Kalbe (Milde) were only stopped in the early 1990s. It was then officially operated as a replacement rail service for a short time .

After the turn

After the political change , a two-hour cycle was introduced in passenger traffic, so that up to nine pairs of passenger trains ran the route on weekdays, plus a pair of Salzwedel – Klötze trains that served rush hour traffic. Depending on the timetable period, the covering was provided by locomotives of the 202 or 219 series or rail buses of the 771 or 772 series . The planned travel time in 1999 was 86 or 92 minutes; was crossed in blocks. The maximum speed was 50 km / h, the average speed at best 41 km / h. In the 2001/02 timetable year, nine pairs of trains ran every two hours on weekdays, crossings were made six times a day in Klötze, twice in Beetzendorf and once in Kusey . On Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays eight pairs of trains drove on the route every two hours, there were six crossings in Klötze and once in Beetzendorf. The route was given the number 301 in the timetable of Deutsche Bahn. Kusey and Klötze, initially also Beetzendorf, continued to be served in freight traffic.

Shutdown

The number of travelers continued to decline, not least because the already sparsely populated area continued to lose inhabitants. Rationalization measures, such as the drastic dismantling of tracks in the train stations, did not lead to a better situation. Finally, a new bridge construction south of Buchhorst, which was required by the widening of the Mittelland Canal and costing six million euros, was fatal, so that passenger traffic was canceled by the state of Saxony-Anhalt on September 29, 2002 . Freight traffic had already come to a standstill in the course of the MORA C rationalization program due to the termination of the contracts with the last freight customer on December 31, 2001. At the request of Deutsche Bahn AG, the line was closed on October 31, 2004.

Takeover by the DRE

The German regional railway GmbH (DRE) then took negotiations to acquire the track and the also defunct route Salzwedel-Geestgottberg on. It finally leased the line on January 1, 2007 in the disused state to secure the line. Due to the widening of the Mittelland Canal, an expensive new bridge was no longer an option. Since the neighboring communities along the 28-kilometer-long Klötze – Oebisfelde section also showed no interest in rail traffic, the tracks here were removed by the DRE in 2008. However, the route remains dedicated as a railway traffic area, so that the route can be reactivated. However, this is made more difficult by the bridge over the Mittelland Canal, which was demolished in November 2009.

The DRE is striving to reactivate the infrastructure in the Klötze – Salzwedel section and on to Geestgottberg near Wittenberge for rail traffic. In the DB course book 2007/08 the resumption of operations as "Altmarkbahn" was announced under the course book number 303, but did not take place. During the journeys on December 13, 2015, the journeys were announced under “Jeetzetalbahn”.

ODEG VT650.90 and VT650.68 stop as DBV 30100 Salzwedel Altstadt-Klötze in Klötze station on December 7, 2014.

In August 2014, the DRE began the clearing work and the removal of existing superstructure defects between Salzwedel and Klötze. The originally planned trips on the occasion of the Martini market in Klötze could not take place due to the derailment of a measuring vehicle. After it was released for operation, on Sunday, December 7th, 2014, for the first time in twelve years, an East German railroad car commuted three times between the Salzwedel Altstadt station and Klötze.

Further special trips between Salzwedel and Klötze took place on December 13, 2015. There are also several interested parties for freight traffic from the intact Siedenlangenbeck transshipment point, with whom the DRE is currently negotiating.

particularities

• The section from Buchhorst to Kunrau ran through the extensive Drömling moorland . The trains drove through a natural landscape - due to damaged sleepers in some cases at 30 km / h. The route was laid out over several kilometers on the border of a total reserve , so that numerous nature observations were possible. In a report, the route is described as a "safari at 50 km / h" and it was said: "The branch line should be one of the most beautiful in Germany". The remaining part of the route is also consistently in an agrarian, partly natural landscape.
• In the course of the construction of the high-speed line Hanover – Berlin in the Oebisfelde area, the route to Salzwedel was relocated in 1995 and extended by two kilometers by installing large curves. Two road bridges were also built over the section of the route, which is legally classified as a new line. This new line was now without traffic after a few years.

See also

• Oebisfelde station
• Salzwedel railway station

literature

• Branch lines in Germany , Bahn-Extra 5/98, GeraNova, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-89724-136-6

Web links

Commons : Oebisfelde – Salzwedel railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Historical reports from the steam locomotive operation on the line
• Article of the Klötzer Volksstimme on the route
• Photos with detailed accompanying text of the route

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See DRE press release of October 10, 2008, "Deutsche Regionaleisenbahn GmbH for the dismantling of Drömlingbahn" . Archived from the original on October 14, 2008. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 28, 2008. 
2. ↑ Volksstimme, Salzwedel April 2, 2008, reproduced in Drehscheibe Online, “Demolition of the Oebisfelde-Klötze railway line”, April 4, 2008 . Retrieved October 28, 2008.
3. ↑ Demolition of the railway bridge no.449 and the Mittellandkanal bridge no.450. (Pdf; 34 kB) Wasserstraßen-Neubauamt Helmstedt, November 3, 2009, accessed on November 10, 2009 . 
4. ↑ Operation East - route report exKBS 301 in turntable No. 260 (December / January 2014), page 61
5. ↑ Volksstimme: Departure! - The train rolls back to Klötze , December 8, 2014.
6. ↑ Timetable for December 13, 2015 ( Memento of November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) .
7. ^ Volksstimme: Train journeys from the old town station , December 4, 2014.
8. ↑ branch lines in Germany , train extra 5/98, GeraNova, Munich 1998